I remember one evening, in the clinic where I used to drink coffee and collect condoms, a particular humorous remark made to a young prostitute by one of the older women. The humorβfor those it is lost onβwas in the absurdity. The truth of the matter is that the nature of prostitution flavours the sexual act as far too distasteful and too sleazy and too bound up with degradation to allow any kind of wholesale enjoyment.
Of course this will fly in the face of the fantasists, but the reality of prostitution usually does. That is not to say these unique and exceptional experiences do not, once in a blue moon, occur. For some women, they do, and when they do, no-one is more surprised than the woman herself.
I would know, because on two occasions those experiences happened to me. When I was sixteen I was released from a court order, the purpose of which had been to keep me detained for my own protection. It did not have the required effect. Anyway, this did not happen; I was released after a few months and it was at this point I went to live in the brothel on Leeson Street.
The first car that pulled up on my first night back on the streets was driven by a young man in his early to mid-twenties. He was attractive, not disrespectful in his manner and he was shy, quiet, not speaking to me much on the way to the laneway I used. When we arrived there I realised that I was aroused. I suddenly realised that I missed it; I missed being held and touched. He pulled out his wallet and asked how much he owed me.
I told him not to worry about it. No doubt he knew something strange had happened but it was easy not to see his expression in the dark. He dropped me back down to the street and then I went to work for real. What happened that night is not something that could be seen as prostitution. An act of prostitution had been intended on both sides but none had taken place. What happened actually transcended the prostitution experience: wilful intercourse with zero mental reservations is not prostitution, and could not, to my mind, be framed as such.
